Kyle Wiens

Apple made a big announcement this morning! Our take is here. We had a feeling this was coming, and wrote about this...

We’re ramping up the amount of writing that we do, so we’ve redesigned the homepage to put these posts front and center....

It’s a very rare breed of person that dedicates their life to helping other people. Mike is that kind of person....

Our illustrious reputation leader has hit a milestone on the weekend of the iPhone X teardown. Well done, Richard!...

Hey folks, We've been working for some time on a new, mobile-friendly /guide page. This the second most popular page on...

Jessa and Rany have suggested improving troubleshooting processes to help with basic questions: "I noticed a suggestion...

We were working through some of the spam issues and accidentally deleted all the comments on iFixit. You may have seen...

We're starting to make some minor layout improvements to Answers in preparation for moving to a more mobile-friendly...

This question has been quite popular over the last year or so since it was posted: How do I transfer data from old iPhone...

We're going to try a new experiment. I'm going to do a live google hangout with y'all at 4:30 Pacific today. You can join...

I’m actually on CompTIA’s side on this one. It takes a while to slow the machine down. I’ve gotten word from multiple state legislative teams that CompTIA has withdrawn. I think this letter timing was a mistake. We haven’t seen anything since then. They are demonstrating good faith by backing off on the issue. Let’s give them a chance.

Awesome! We really appreciate the help. We are closer in Massachusetts than ever—we just need to get a floor vote scheduled!

That’s a fair idea! We were able to convince CompTIA this weekend to stop lobbying against Right to Repair. So that’s a big win! I agree, we need more modern and better certifications. Expanding Master Tech is certainly something that we are considering.

It’s not quite a win, really more of a statement of intent by a very influential state organization. We need to do the same thing in state after state, and then get their help working to get legislation passed. This is a great milestone, but is going to require a lot more work to get this over the finish line.

Yes we did! I replied to Walt. Here’s what I said: "Hi Walt! I respect you hugely. I think you're missing something here. Refurbishers don't need a new backdoor, or any changes to Apple's encryption. Or any changes to the device. These are cloud locks. They phone home to Apple's servers. I have it on good authority that Apple already unlocks these devices for their own devices and their contracted refurbishers. No backdoor needed. We're not advocating that users, or even repair shops, be able to bypass these locks. Large scale refurbishers have one of two certifications which require regular independent audits: R2 and e-Stewards. The ideal situation would be for Apple (and other OEMs with anti-theft locks) to provide a mechanism for refurbishers to submit serial numbers for theft verification. Once they know the device is stolen, the refurbisher is legally required to send it back to the user. After some waiting period (90 days? six months?), of a device not being reported as stolen, Apple could remove the...

Hi Elias! Can you share a little more information? What browser are you using? Can you try using a different browser and let us know if the same thing happens? Your flow is correct, but you should be logged in once you're redirected back. Thanks!

This setting allows administrators to pass or fail a moderation vote that is in progress. I use it sparingly, such as when I need to get spam removed right away.

We think so! We have the most strenuous testing in the aftermarket, and I’ll put our batteries up against Apple’s any day. You don’t have to believe us, though. We stand behind them with a strong warranty. We’ve written more information about our testing and sourcing our quality parts.

Hi Lyam! Most of the work that we do is open source, and can be reshared with attribution. We’ve also put a lot of helpful resources together for growing your repair business. Hope that helps.

Votes—primarily upvotes—are an important signal to the system. We use post scores for all kinds of things, including surfacing relevant posts to new members and for telling Google which pages are important. Historically, the biggest problem that we have is that people are not voting enough! The more votes, the more signal that the system has. We currently disallow downvoting until you have 200 reputation, and limit everyone to 15 downvotes per day at a cost of -2 reputation for each down vote that you cast. Are you proposing raising the reputation requirement for casting a downvote? We also have a separate upvote limit per day for new users of 15 votes. Another option would be to lower this to something like 5 votes per day.